Five Ways To Deal With Failure

Failure is a big part of life, like it or not not everything is going to go your way. So, how do you deal with failure?

If you’re active on any form of social media then it may seem like nobody else has to deal with failure. We all know that social media isn’t a full representation of anybody’s life, but it can be hard to find the positivity when it seems like the whole world is on the up. Which is why you need to heed your own counsel. Learning how to deal with failure means you’ll learn the lessons and hopefully succeed next time.

Here’s five things to remember

Listen to everything

Whether it’s a job interview you didn’t ace or a presentation that didn’t go your way, listen to the feedback. It can be easy when faced with challenging situations to withdraw, stop listening and count the hours until you’re able to be on your own. But that’s doing yourself a disservice. You have to understand why something went wrong to truly learn from it. So listen to the feedback, ask questions, and try to stay gracious.

Look for the why

Understanding why you failed is halfway to fixing the problem. Did you do enough prep? Did you rush the presentation? Or did you over estimate what you knew only to end up floundering on one question? By looking back at what happened you’ll start to learn what needs to be addressed for next time.

Find the opportunity

If opportunity comes from the unlikeliest of places, then finding a chance for growth in the midst of failure is one such example. Maybe this failure will give you a chance to upskill? A chance to reach out to a colleague and learn more? There’s always an opportunity to learn, and finding that chance means you won’t view the whole experience as a waste of time.

Look at the silver lining

This one might need to be outsourced! When you’re in the middle of a bad situation it can be hard to remove yourself from the nitty gritty to find the silver lining, so instead ask a friend. Somebody who has a helicopter view of the situation can see things you’re going to miss.

Let it go

This is the big one. You failed. It’s hard. You’ll learn from it. Now it’s time to let it go and move on. Hanging on to past failures is going to do more harm to your confidence than any futher failures will.